


trndsttr

by perissologist



Series: a little less conversation [9]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dance, Dick Grayson's Harem of Morally Ambiguous Older Men, M/M, Multi, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 07:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16530374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perissologist/pseuds/perissologist
Summary: M leans over to smirk in Dick’s space. “So. This was where you ran off to after the gala, huh?”“What?” Dick burrows down into his seat. “No. That was—”“It’s alright, Grayson,” M says. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”“And you certainly don’t have to explain that,” Helena purrs, burgundy lips curling in appreciation. Dick looks up to Jason striding onto the stage, his signature red baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His jacket and hoodie are gone, leaving him in a simple gray t-shirt and well-fitting black joggers. Dick swallows and tries to disappear into the velvet cushions. “Well done, Grayson.”





	trndsttr

“Fuck—” Dick chokes out a gasp. “Slade—”

Slade’s thrusts slow to a halt between Dick’s thighs. Dick bites back a soft noise as Slade tilts his jaw to mouth at the sensitive skin of Dick’s throat. “Sated, Grayson?”

Dick sighs and lets his forehead fall against Slade’s shoulder. “Mm. For now.”

Slade grins like a shark and withdraws, pulling a whine of protest from deep in Dick’s chest. He begins doing up the buttons of his dress pants with efficient flicks of his fingers. “My last meeting of the day ends at nine.”

Dick looks up at him, coy, in the middle of pulling up his own pants. “Are you asking me out on a date, Slade?”

Slade’s mouth sharpens and he reaches forward to do up Dick’s zipper for him. The brush of his fingers sends a shiver running down Dick’s spine. “Call me, Grayson.”

Dick responds with a goofy smile. “I will.”

Dick watches as Slade pushes aside the mop and bucket resting against the door of the closet and steps into the hall outside, pausing to adjust his collar. He glances over his shoulder and for a moment, Dick is caught in the icepick-blue of Slade’s good eye; then he turns and is gone, leaving Dick alone in the janitor’s closet where they had spent the last half-hour together.

Dick huffs out a breath and knocks his head back against the wall. Then he straightens himself out, finds the duffel bag he had abandoned on the floor some time earlier, and slips out of the closet, studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone passing by as he pulls his baseball cap low over his eyes and makes for the elevator.

Dick leaves DS Enterprises’ glossy thirty-story headquarter building in downtown Gotham at 12:32 pm and makes it to the Foundation Theater just in time for the Company’s Thursday afternoon practice. M and the rest of the dancers are already on the stage, warming up, and Diana is in the pit, scribbling in what Dick recognizes as her ideas notebook against the lid of the piano. He pulls up short in the west entrance to the auditorium and scans the seats—and spots a solitary figure at the far end of the second row. _Good,_ he thinks, even as anxiety does an unwanted dance in the pit of his stomach. _He’s on time. Diana will like him._

Dick hitches his duffel further up his shoulder and hurries down the aisle. “Jason, hey. Sorry I’m late.”

Jason turns at the sound of Dick’s voice. “Oh, hey. Don’t worry about it, I just got here.”

It’s been a week since Dick last saw Jason, and while the embarrassment of his unrefuted crush has faded in the heat of Slade’s mouth, the sight of Jason’s blue-green eyes still makes Dick nervous. He gestures for Jason to follow him as he makes his way into the pit. “Diana, hi. Do you have a sec?”

Diana looks up from her notebooks. “Of course, Richard. This is the consultant you told me about?”

“Yeah—Jason, this is Diana Prince, our director and head choreographer. Diana, this is Jason Todd; he’s a—uh—expert in modern and hip-hop. He does a lot with the local Gotham scene.”

Jason’s expression twitches, but the embellishment does the trick. Diana straightens and holds out her hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Todd. Thank you for coming.”

“Oh—” Jason quickly takes the hand. “Thank you for having me, Ms. Prince.”

Diana flashes her famous magnanimous smile. Dick grins over her shoulder and throws Jason a thumbs up.

Diana turns to the stage and claps her hands. Immediately, the warm-up music cuts out, and the Company scrambles to attention. “Everyone clear the stage, please.” She looks to Jason as the dancers grab their things and begin to hop down into the pit. “It’s all yours, Mr. Todd.”

“Uh—” Jason darts a startled glance at Dick. “Sorry?”

“If we are to know whether this collaboration can work, we should have a sense of your style. So.” Diana gestures. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Jason flashes panicked eyes at Dick. “I haven’t prepared anything,” he hisses under his breath.

“It’s okay,” Dick replies distractedly, dropping his duffel into an empty seat. “Diana just wants to see what you can do.”

Jason blinks at him for a second, seemingly speechless; then he huffs out a breath and drops his own bag. “Is there a speaker I can use?”

One of the ballerinas guides Jason to the speaker system in the left wing while Dick collapses in between M and Helena in the front row. M leans over to smirk in Dick’s space. “So. This was where you ran off to after the gala, huh?”

“What?” Dick burrows down into his seat. “No. That was—”

“It’s alright, Grayson,” M says. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“And you certainly don’t have to explain _that_ ,” Helena purrs, burgundy lips curling in appreciation. Dick looks up to Jason striding onto the stage, his signature red baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His jacket and hoodie are gone, leaving him in a simple gray t-shirt and well-fitting black joggers. Dick swallows and tries to disappear into the velvet cushions. “Well done, Grayson.”

“No, it’s _really_ not—”

A song starts on the theater’s surround-sound speakers, the soft opening beats of an electronic melody with M. Maggie’s mellow voice asking, _“Hey you, can I learn your flavor?”_ The moment the music begins, Jason shifts into motion, face tilted downwards to cast his eyes in shadow. It quickly becomes apparent to Dick that this routine is nothing like the rapid, energetic performances that he saw Jason give at underground dance competitions, when the drum of the music thumped so loud Dick could feel it in his bones; this is something fluid and light, graceful. Dick sits up despite himself, entranced.

On the stage, Jason transitions from smooth, relaxed limbs to jerking precision and back again, effortless as water. He’s fluid and gentle on the in-between lines, purposeful and controlled on the skipping synth beats. _“I feel the heat when you’re staring off across the room,”_ M. Maggie sings, and Jason drops to the floor, chest nearly against the floorboards, legs cocked and supporting the weight of his body with nothing more than his hands; _“I dare you play your cards, boy you bet I’m a trendsetter too”_ and he’s pushing himself upright onto feet planted flat, as smooth as a video clip in rewind. The entire Company is silent; even Helena is quiet for once, watching with brows raised.

The routine speeds up when the beat drops, Jason moving across the stage with sharp purpose, like the lurid pulse of the song brought to physicality. Dick feels his mouth go dry as he watches Jason’s chest undulate in time to _“Take two, I’m still tryna figure out what makes you,”_ his hips shift and hands twist to _“Hard on the call, I guess it comes from your heart._ ” _Oh, shit,_ Dick thinks, in a rare moment of self-realization. _This is bad._

The routine ends with Jason dropping bodily back onto the floor, then undulating upright again, arms windmilling exaggeratedly, with the final echoes of _“But I’m a trendsetter too, oh_.” He finishes in a crouch, one arm draped over his knee, the other balancing against the stage. For a moment, there’s silence; then the dancers scattered throughout the seats begin to clap, in the fierce, jealous way Dick recognizes when they’ve just seen a performance they both liked and did not put on themselves. Jason rises to his feet, blinking in surprise at the vocal approval emanating from all sides.

Diana stands, expression pleased. “That was very impressive, Mr. Todd,” she says. “Your form is excellent. Our…skill sets are very different, but. I think we’ll do well together.”

Jason’s brows shoot up. “Yeah?”

“I presume you’re familiar with the Company’s performances?”

“Uh—yeah,” Jason says. His eyes dart toward Dick. “I’ve seen some clips on YouTube.”

Diana smirks. “Not quite the same, I think.” She turns, scanning the audience. “Richard. Will you do us the honor of performing your most recent routine?”

Dick freezes. “What?”

“It will be useful for Mr. Todd to see our style in action.” Diana gestures to the stage as she takes her seat again. “Go on.”

“Yes, Grayson,” M says, nudging Dick’s shoulder with a smirk that Dick wouldn’t mind punching off him. “Go on.”

Dick swallows and gets up. He and Jason trade places, Jason hopping down off the stage as Dick levies himself onto it. Before Jason can sit down, Dick pauses him with a hand to the arm and swallows down whatever complicated ball of emotions is trying to claw its way out of his throat. “Hey,” he says instead. “You killed it.”

Jason grins at him and goes to take his seat. Diana gestures to the stage tech in the wings. A moment later, the opening notes of Shostakovich’s _Piano Concerto No.2 in F Major_ fills the auditorium, and the silks drop down from their hook in the ceiling.

When Dick first came to Gotham, he was near-mute with trauma, jumping at every adult who passed within two feet of him and waking every morning from dreams of his parents’ broken bodies. At first, he was convinced that Bruce didn’t have any friends; the man was jovial and boyish in public, but quiet and grave at the manor, not to mention intensely private. But within those first few months, Dick met first Clark, then Diana, both of whom told him not to take his new guardian so seriously, like it was a mission they were entrusting him with. It was Diana who suggested to Bruce that Dick join the Company. Both Bruce and Dick were reluctant at first, Bruce to let Dick out of his sight and Dick to go outside the manor—but then Diana coaxed Dick to try the new silks rig they’d just installed at the Foundation, and Dick never looked back.

Aerials are different than trapeze: All the control belongs to him, in the tight bind of the silks around his hands and the taut strength of his own arms. That surety—knowing that he has full command of his body at every second—is what makes him feel so free, what makes him feel safe when he’s suspended by nothing but a set of silk ribbons fifteen feet above the ground. _Trust in your partners, Robin,_ his mother used to say, guiding the placement of his hands on the trapeze bars, _but trust most of all in yourself._  

 _Concerto No.2_ opens on a smooth, somber violin _andante._ Dick steps up to the ribbons and grasps one in each hand, fisting his fingers in the soft fabric. He breathes in, feeling the air fill his lungs. Then, to the strings sliding through their mournful introduction, he rises into a high arabesque, arms out and one foot lifted, back down into a plié, up again into développé with the same foot kicking higher towards his head and arms angled for balance. The ribbons flutter with the movement of his arms, so that at a distance it looks like the wings of a bird, or a butterfly flitting through the air. The strings dip and Dick takes three quick steps, then leaps sideways in an assemblé, legs pressed straight together and arms in a graceful V. He lands on his toes and eases into a run, circling around to the back of the stage.

The first clear, high note of the piano splashes like a raindrop through the strings, following into a gentle, rambling melody. Dick turns toward the audience, tucking each of the silks behind his arm, as the piano trails up into the high key and dallies between two notes, fading into a pause; then, the moment it drops back in, Dick is running and leaping, back arched, letting his momentum carry him through the air and over the edge of the stage. He soars up and seems to hover there for a moment, the heat of the stage lights close on his face; then he swings back down, grounding himself with a backwards run. He releases one of the silks and winds the other around his arm. Then he takes off again in great, bounding leaps while the rig winds up the silks, until his feet lift clear off the stage and he’s soaring in a circle above the seats, body floating free, anchored only by his arm. The piano burbles and murmurs over the moody sigh of the violins, and Dick closes his eyes, losing himself in the feeling of being utterly weightless.

By the time the last notes of the piece arrive, most of Dick’s coworkers look bored; they’ve seen the routine dozens of times before in practice. But Jason is leaning out of his seat, elbows on his knees, those ocean eyes intent on Dick’s every move. Dick comes down from his last fly and releases the silks, shaking the tension out of his hands. He catches Jason’s gaze and feels his breath hitch: Jason’s expression is inscrutable, but his eyes are blazing.

The music fades away. Diana nods to him, pleased. “Thank you, Richard.” She turns to Jason. “So, Mr. Todd. What do you think?”

Jason looks at her and grins. “Yeah, I’ve got some ideas.”

~*~

Jason spends the rest of the rehearsal familiarizing himself with all the dancers in the Company and their various roles, studiously jotting down notes on a little pad of paper he digs out of his bag. Dick can’t stop looking at him for the rest of the afternoon, his stomach twisting in on itself every time he does. It gets to the point that M leans down in the middle of their routine together and murmurs in his ear, “Your hard-on is showing, Grayson.”

Dick instantly scowls and shoves him back, turning the motion into a last-second dip with M’s palm warm on the small of his back. “Very funny.”

M steps forward and wraps a muscular arm around Dick’s legs. He hefts Dick up, so that his abdomen is pressing against M’s warm, solid chest. “You’re telling me our newest choreographer wasn’t the date you ran off to after the gala?” Dick ignores him and reaches both arms up to wrap them in the silks. “Or the person who’s been giving you your daily vitamins since?”

“What?” Dick glances down at M, even as M takes several sweeping steps back, drawing Dick with him. He releases Dick, and Dick swings like a pendulum on the silks, legs unfolding in a perfect split. M catches him again as he swings back. “What do you mean?”

“Please, Grayson.” M’s eyes sparkle with mirth below him. “You think I haven’t noticed you running into rehearsal with your hair mussed and bruises on your neck? Not the subtlest approach to having a fling. Who’s the lucky guy or girl?”

Dick feels his cheeks heat. “No one you know.”

“Alright, everyone!” Diana calls. “That’s it for today. We’ll pick up with some new exercises tomorrow.” She waves her hand. “You’re all dismissed. Richard, could I speak to you for a moment?”

Dick silently thanks whatever gods are looking out for him for the excuse to drop out of M’s arms and hurry off the stage. Diana and Jason are deep in conversation by the time he finds his shoes and makes it up to them in the audience. “Richard, excellent,” Diana greets him. “Mr. Todd and I were just discussing some of the thoughts he has for our collaboration. Are you available to come in early tomorrow to meet with us and go over some initial ideas?”

Dick’s gaze darts from Diana to Jason and back again. “Sure, of course. Eleven?”

“Eleven am sounds wonderful.” Diana offers a hand for Jason to shake, then leans in to give Dick a quick kiss on the cheek. “Till tomorrow, then.”

Jason waits until Diana is out of earshot before turning to Dick with wide eyes and a growing grin. “Dude.”

Dick couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of him if he tried. “I know,” he says. “Diana likes you.”

Jason blinks in exaggerated shock. “That seems impossible.”

Dick shakes her head. “She’s won over by talent. You were incredible up there.”

“Ah.” Jason grins, sheepish. Dick’s chest, the traitorous bastard, twinges in response. “I wish I could’ve done something more polished for her, I’ve only been working on that routine for about a week, but usually I choreograph for multiple people—”

“Don’t even,” Dick says. “It was…honestly, kind of surreal. I’ve never seen an urban routine that _flowed_ like that. It was like gravity didn’t even have an affect on you.”

“Gravity didn’t have an effect on _me?_ Do you remember what you did right after? Grayson, I know I gave you a lot of shit for being a ballerina, but I take it all back. That routine was…I don’t even have the words for it.” Jason shakes his head in awe, genuine this time. “I can see how it must have taken so much training, but you made it look effortless. Like people just fly all the time and it’s no big deal.”

Warmth blossoms in Dick’s stomach. As one of the Classics Company’s most well-known dancers, he’s used to praise and attention, but this—the sparkle in Jason’s eyes and the way he grins like he can’t help himself—this feels more genuine and joyful than anything in his career has for a long time. Dick has missed this: This feeling of sharing his craft, this feeling of pride and contentment. “Thanks, Jason. That means a lot.”

They stand there for a moment, grinning stupidly at each other, and Dick feels his heart skip. Jason’s grin is sharp and a little crooked, and he has a smattering of freckles over his nose that make his strong jaw and broad face look boyish from just the right angle. His eyes are speckled with the same flecks of gray as when he looked at Dick under the night sky in Gotham Park and told him _This isn’t a date._ “Jason—”

“So you’re the choreographer I’ve heard so much about.” Dick jumps at M’s impossibly close voice and turns to find its purveyor, standing not two inches behind him, with his most maleficent grin out in full force. “You live up to your reputation, Mr. Todd.”

“Oh—” Jason blinks. “You can call me Jason, but uh, yeah, thanks. You’ve heard of me?”

M flashes mirthful whisky eyes at Dick. Dick wishes he could find a way to punch M and get away with it. “Dickie here has had a lot to say about you.”

Jason blinks again. “Oh,” he says, dumbly.

M holds out a hand. “M. It’s a pleasure.”

“You too,” Jason says, taking the hand. His eyes flicker to Dick. “You’re Dick’s partner, right?”

“I am,” M hums with amusement. Dick wonders if he can telepathically tell M to shut up. “We’ve worked together for three years.”

“Ah,” Jason says, politely. Dick wishes for the sweet release of death. “That’s cool.”

“How do you and Grayson know each other?”

Dick panics. How does one say _His dance partner used to be one of my best friends but now he hates my guts and I thought we were going on a date_ without sounding like a basket case?

“Dick.”

Dick looks up, startled. Slade stands in the west entrance of the theater, one hand tucked loosely in the pocket of his slacks, the other holding a heavy brown paper bag. His one eye flicks placidly from M to Jason to Dick again. “Slade? What are you doing here?”

“My late meeting was canceled,” Slade demurs. He holds up the bag. “I thought I’d surprise you with dinner.”

“Oh.” Dick looks around himself and feels the panic mount. “Okay, um, give me a second.”

M meets Dick’s gaze as he reaches over to the seats to grab his stuff. His brows are raised, but the rest of his expression is neutral. “This again, then, Grayson?”

 _Shit,_ Dick thinks. He likes it better when M is being an unadulterated asshole. “It’s fine,” he assures him, quickly. He turns back to Jason, who is looking between the three of them with a thoughtful expression. “Jason. Thanks for coming today.”

“Sure,” Jason says. His eyes take in Slade, then meet Dick’s again. “See you tomorrow?’

“Yeah,” Dick says. The thought puts an unwanted thrill in his stomach that he does his best to violently suppress. He hefts his duffel and hurries toward Slade. He feels Slade’s hand settle, heavy and warm, on the small of his back as they turn away from the others. “C’mon. Let’s go eat in the park.” 

**Author's Note:**

> *rises victorious from the ashes of my former self after two long, long years to lovingly dump another installment of this garbage pile into your laps* surprise!! 
> 
> to new readers: welcome and thanks for coming!! drop a comment here and then come talk to me @ perissologist.tumblr.com!  
> to old readers who have returned, like prodigal sons to a kingdom in need: thank you and i'm sorry
> 
> the inspo for today's dances comes from dylan mayoral's choreography of trndsttr at the urban dance camp and cirque du soleil's performance of la nouba, an aerial ballet in silk. look them up on youtube and show them some love, they are freaking INCREDIBLE


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